What does despair taste like?

  Sweet overripe strawberries…

  The sun was barely cresting over the buildings in the early spring morning. It bathed the city in a golden hue that didn’t break through the chill of winter’s death. Anoniel Vael looked up from the ground. The scent filled the air around him as human voices rose into a cacophony of angry yelling.

  An ephemeral dragon flew past his eyes, a smokey blood-red serpentine creature no larger than his palm. It darted into the shouting crowd ahead of him.

  A woman was screaming from within the crowd, her voice high and keening over the shouts.

  Before he thought better of it, Anoniel changed directions and pushed through to the center of the crowd.

  Two men held a third restrained as a fourth hit him in the gut with a fist wrapped in chains.

  “Filthy deadblood!” the man roared. Two sashes of purple and red were wrapped around his waist with a golden cord tied at his hip. An oak quarterstaff was discarded on the ground near him.

  The other two men wore red sashes bound with silver cord, their own quarterstaffs abandoned at their feet.

  Another dragon appeared on the dhampir man’s shoulder, turning its accusing gaze on Anoniel as he stood and watched the man hiss in defiance at the humans around him. Blood coated his face from where his skin had burst, his fangs fully extended. He strained against the humans, his brown eyes glowing red with his bloodlust.

  “ENOUGH!”

  The voice roared through the crowd, silencing many of the onlookers as they turned to look. Anoniel moved with them as they parted for the man who had spoken.

  Brother Castile walked through the crowd, his pointed face turned up as if he didn’t want to smell the surrounding rabble. Wireframe glasses were perched on his rather large nose. His thin body was dressed in black robes, and a bony hand with long fingers clasped the iron raven pendant at the end of a beaded necklace.

  The Mors Orationis marked Castile as a Guardian of the Dead, one of the Black Raven’s children.

  A necromancer.

  Four collared and armed men followed and flanked him. Their eyes downcast and masks covering their mouths. Blond and brown hair had been cut short to their scalps and shaved away in a circle around the brand of a raven behind their right ears.

  Everything about the man was rodent-thin and twitching — even the cedar-and-fungus scent clinging to him like rot disguised as cologne.

  “Brother Castile…” the man with the purple and red sashes said as he took a step back from the struggling dhampir. He was shaking as his foot touched the quarterstaff. A look of surprise crossed his eyes as he bent down to retrieve the weapon. The scent of cedarwood rose from the man as he took a deep breath, his grip tightening and loosening on the oak in his hand.

  “What has happened, Flame Keeper Kaylon?” Brother Castile asked.

  Anoniel inched back further into the crowd at the name. It wouldn’t be the first time a mage Flame Keeper noticed him in a crowd. But while his instincts told him to flee, he was rooted to the spot as he watched.

  “This monster dared to think himself worthy of my daughter,” Flame Keeper Kaylon growled.

  Castile looked at the dhampir, tapping a finger on the iron raven at the end of his Mors Orationis. “Is this true? Have you tainted the pure?”

  “Fuck you!” the dhampir spat, hissing and bearing his fangs at the necromancer. “I love Lianna!”

  “My, what a foul mouth you have,” the necromancer mused. “And the audacity for the unclean to proclaim love. Your kind are as dark and twisted as your forebears, and the Nephilim who bore the three. You are incapable of love.”

  Anoniel inched further back into the crowd, scrunching his nose at the rotten scent of cedar from the necromancer.

  “You know nothing of us!” the dhampir screamed. “The Moon Mother blessed us!”

  Brother Castile’s eyes narrowed before he lifted one bony hand and snapped his long fingers. “By order of the Temple and the Prophet Mallum Sanguinem, you shall be taken as Devotus.”

  Two of the masked dhampirs at his side stepped forward, one of them gripping the dhampir’s jaw as he forced it to stay open, the other reaching in to grab one of the extended fangs. The two Flames stepped back as they released their hold on the dhampir, and they looked to their Flame Keeper, whose eyes had widened. The other two masked dhampirs stepped in to take their place without a word.

  “Levi!” the young woman, Lianna, screamed, struggling against the man holding her.

  Levi screamed.

  Overripe strawberries filled the air, mingling with the cedar fungus of Castile’s faith.

  Anoniel’s stomach roiled as he turned his back on the scene, pushing his way out of the crowd. He wasn’t the only one, but he doubted the others could hear the mocking cries of dragons echoing through their souls.

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  Chasing them as they fled the screams of a man whose only crime was love.

  Anoniel said nothing as he entered Raiskin’s forge, the oven-like heat pressing against him and chasing the winter chill from skin. But it could not warm the despair from his bones.

  “Mr. Hambel ordered a new set of knives for the inn,” Raiskin said, accepting Anoniel’s grunt as he put on his heavy leather apron and retrieved his tools from his bag. “A large chef, one cleaver, three utility, one boning, and one paring.”

  Anoniel nodded as he wrote the order down, the sound of charcoal on parchment drowned out by the roar of flames as Raiskin’s son worked the bellows. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket as he grabbed what he needed for the cleaver.

  He was almost done with the cleaver, the setting sun casting long shadows, when the scent sent a shiver down his spine.

  Overripe strawberries.

  But not the despair of Lianna and her Levi.

  When he looked up from the knife, he saw a haggard young woman with a basket of wildflowers in front of the shop. A smokey red ephemeral dragon perched on her shoulder as she tried to get the attention of those walking by.

  A small child, no older than four, clung to a dress that was more rags than clothing as she meandered past the blacksmith shop Anoniel had been working in since the start of winter, a brief stop on his own eternal wanderings.

  “Mommy, I’m hungry…” the little boy whined, tugging on his mother’s dress.

  “I know,” she assured him, smiling down at him and ruffling his hair. There was a flash of fangs when she spoke. The wind catching in her hair, the dual color of black and pale golden blond. Stringy and unkempt.

  She turned back to the pedestrians and tried again.

  A nod, a smile, anything.

  Curses and spit met her flowers instead.

  A wet cough shook her frail frame, and he looked away. Focusing on the metal before him, trying to see past the memory of mother and child… to the blade glowing like a brand in his hands.

  “Deadblood…”

  Anoniel didn’t flinch. He simply looked at Raiskin.

  The old blacksmith spat on the ground in the direction the woman and her child had gone, following the flow of the crowd. His corded muscles flexing as he resumed his work on the sword, a city guard had commissioned. The scent of sulfur radiated from the human like a sour cologne that clung to the roof of Anoniel’s mouth, giving him no choice but to taste it. To let it settle, heavy and bitter, on his tongue.

  Not the overripe sweetness of strawberries. Not despair.

  Hatred.

  Unbridled and born from chains Raiskin had never worn.

  Neither spoke after that, returning to their work. A few days passed, and the woman and her child appeared twice more. Each time, the woman appeared paler than the last—heavy bags under her eyes, and a wet cough that grew worse.

  Each time, Anoniel avoided her gaze. He couldn’t save her. She was already dying, and her child would feed. Then? He would die as well. There was nothing Anoniel could do, just as there had been nothing he could do for his own father.

  He’d been down that road before.

  He told himself that every time he saw them. And the ephemeral dragon that was their despair seemed to mock him.

  Or was it judging him?

  “Five knives in five days,” Raiskin said, patting Anoniel’s shoulder. “If it wasn’t for the flaws in the blades, I’d say you were a master.”

  Anoniel looked up from the third utility knife he had just completed. Spring still hadn’t chased away the chill completely, but he could smell the coming of spring storms in the air. Felt in his bones that it was almost time for him to leave.

  The Eternal Mountains were still as prosperous as when the Vampire Lord, Frostfang, ruled them with an iron fist. But since his death, humans had driven his remaining soldiers from the mountains and claimed them for their own.

  As Anoniel stretched, his eyes landed on Brother Castile as he passed by, and the four collared dhampirs that followed him like silent dogs. Their mouths covered even as they kept their eyes downcast.

  He had heard whispers in the town that the Raven Temple had taken Lianna along with Levi and caused tension between the necromancers and mages.

  “Seems even Brother Castile’s coming around to Father Mallum Sanguinem’s way of thinking.” Raiskin’s lip curled as he said it.

  Anoniel’s eyes flicked to him before going back to the four dhampirs. He grunted a response as he added the knife to the rest of the order for Mr. Hambel and put his hammer and apron away.

  The scent of sulfur filled the smithy as Raiskin continued.

  “If they don’t have the decency to stay dead when killed, they can at least be put to use in hunting the other deadbloods. Too bad the Fuile’Feirg refuse to hunt them…”

  He let the human’s voice wash over him, grunting in response as he ignored the sour taste in his mouth.

  Even if I wanted to, I can’t help them. I couldn’t even help him…

  The sun had fully set when Anoniel collected his pay for the day and made his way through the emptying streets to the hostel he had made his home for the winter.

  He kept his head down, hiding the strange eyes that had been his burden since he was a child. A lock of his hair fell into his vision as he walked, a silvery platinum blond strand peeking through the black.

  He sighed, changing course to the alchemist’s shop. I wonder how much the bastard will charge this time…

  Cirelic Seredin’s shop was on the other side of Iron City from the hostel near Raiskin’s smithy. Tucked into a quiet alleyway like a hidden gem. Anoniel banged his fist on the shop’s door, waiting for a few heartbeats before repeating, continuing until Cirelic opened the door.

  “By the Moon Mother, tone down your racket!” the werewolf growled, his eyes narrowing as he focused on Anoniel. “Here for more iron salts? That pretty silver is starting to show.”

  Cirelic’s hair was as white as freshly fallen snow, and his skin had the strange, ethereal pallor that had once been common among the wolves of the Snow Moon Pack. Anoniel didn’t know why or how the lone wolf had come to be in Iron City when the rest of the pack’s remnants resided in Yisra and the Snow Shroud Mountains.

  “Yes,” Anoniel whispered, looking into the wolf’s eyes. Ice-blue eyes flinched a bit, but Cirelic didn’t back down. He never did. “And more of your Alchemist Veil.”

  He started to close the door. “Come back in the morning.”

  “Now,” Anoniel insisted, stopping him from closing the door.

  “Six gold coins then,” Cirelic snapped at him.

  “What?” The wolf only charged him one gold coin for the order last month.

  “You heard me. Six gold coins, or come back tomorrow.”

  Anoniel gritted his teeth. “How much if I come back first thing in the morning?”

  “Five.”

  “That’s thievery!”

  “That’s the constable cracking down on dhampirs hiding their hair,” Cirelic growled at him. “Take it or let that silver hair show the city you’re not entirely human yourself. Perhaps they’ll be lenient with you since you’re not a dhampir. Or they won’t believe it, even with your lack of fangs.”

  “What if I bring you soot from the smithy tomorrow?” Anoniel asked. He’d traded soot for iron salts and Alchemist’s Veil before. It wasn’t uncommon, and Raiskin wouldn’t notice if he arrived early to sweep out the forge. He could even mask the peeking silver of his hair with it, just long enough to pass. Long enough that no one would notice he wasn’t like them.

  The two men stared at each other for a long while before Cirelic nodded. “I’ll knock off three gold coins for the soot, even if you make it here after close.”